


The Lighthouse

by ladyxdarcy



Series: From the Unwritten [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Amnesiac Mycroft, Could be modern, Diary/Journal, Epistolary, Ficlet, If You Squint - Freeform, Lighthouse Keeper Greg, Lighthouses, M/M, Shipwrecked Mycroft, lighthouse au, period au, up to the reader - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 18:11:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15006488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyxdarcy/pseuds/ladyxdarcy
Summary: He didn't know who he was, all he knew was that he was hopelessly in love with the man who saved him.Shipwrecked after a storm, Mycroft Holmes develops amnesia and is found by lighthouse keeper Gregory Lestrade. AU.Journal entry.





	The Lighthouse

**Author's Note:**

> I've an idea for this AU for a while but I just don't have the time to create a full story for it---yet. Time will only tell if that changes, but I found inspiration to write this little blurb during a free moment in class, and decided to type it up and post it. Perhaps one day I will write the full story, but for now all I can offer is this.
> 
> Enjoy.

I can’t remember a time without him.

I don’t think I want to.

When the waves pushed me to his shore I thought, with the golden light of fresh morning after a storm giving him an ethereal glow, I had thought him to be an angel, and that I had indeed met my doom.

But, surely, what doom could exist when this angel gifted me with his presence? What misery mattered?

I don’t remember who I am. I have neither recollection of my name nor my life before meeting this angel on an otherwise empty shore. My saviour.

Gregory.

The name itself invokes the choir of angels I had thought him to be as I stare upon his countenance.

I fear remembering.

I fear having to leave this place and Gregory’s side. I fear I might become yet another lovesick stray to warm the man’s feet during the winter should I stay, a companion to the man’s dog even now currently lazing beside the fireplace at Gregory’s feet, and yet I cannot bring myself to care. I rejoice in it, even. If I could but stay for eternity in this lighthouse cottage with this angel sitting before me.

My angel.

We pieced together that I had been in what must have been a shipwreck judging by the debris on the shore with me and my waterlogged clothing, but said clothing had been neither sailor nor pirate, nor even military. A passenger, perhaps. A man of wealth? The tattered remains of my clothing bespoke of such a possibility, at the very least.

I’d give all imagined wealth up, however, to stay with my Gregory forevermore.

What life waits for me back home? A wife? A brood of children underfoot, which would only be expected of a man of high standing, no matter his proclivities and general disinterest in the fairer sex. Though my past is lost to me, I know where my own proclivities and perversions lay, and I cannot picture a life with wife and child.

Why was I travelling the treacherous sea at all? My hands, when Gregory found me, were smooth and maintained. Unlike now, hardened and calloused from helping Gregory with the upkeep of the lighthouse, which speaks of an unfamiliarity of the hard salt air of the sea. Was I yet somehow a merchant? A noble? A doctor, even? My soft hands spoke for one of these, and yet no signet nor talisman survived the wreck with me to give me clues.

I dread to remember. I dread to feel compelled to leave this place and my Gregory’s side for a life I cannot bring myself to miss nor desire.

My Gregory.

I thought he would kiss me last night, standing under the stooped roof of the lighthouse’s entrance as we watched the rain, our breaths misting in the air. We were so close on the narrow steps, our arms touching beneath the blankets he’d drawn over us to watch the gentle storm. His idiot dog was chasing the rain as though the droplets were hares, and Gregory was softly telling me of how he had found the wretched thing during a similar storm, skin and bones and matted fur.

Storms bring the greatest treasures, he’d told me, looking at me with such intensity I thought for certain that this was finally it. After weeks of warm words, fleeting touches, and lingering looks, I thought…

Alas, it was not to be, and whether that means that Gregory is either made of sterner stuff or of stronger cowardice, I do not know.

O, how I wish that he would, however, for I am a coward. Can he not see how I long for his touch? For him? Does he too fear as I do of my other life, and the troubles within that could ruin this life between us? Does he fear the disparity of our worlds? Does he, too, fear a wife and child waiting for me?

There was a ring on my hand, my sole surviving personal effect, but it had not laid on the correct finger. It’s safe within the bedside drawer now, safe from my gaze and any stirring of memory.

I do not know how much longer I can wait, how much longer I can last without tasting Gregory’s lips on mine, taste the bitter ale he prefers on long cold nights, until I can feel his fingers on my skin beneath my new clothing. I long for his breath and mine to mingle, for our bodies to become one.

Gregory had suggested that writing everything down might resuscitate my memory, but instead I have found that it has become only pages upon pages of my adoration for the man sitting across from me, another mystery book dogeared beyond belief in his lap; an old favourite, no doubt, a comfortable companion on such nights, as too is the mutt at his feet, and the man writing these pages now. At least, I hope I bring the man comfort, as he does for me. Surely, by now, it must be so extraordinarily obvious that even his dog knows of my deepest regards for the man.

No matter who or what awaits me in my former life, wherever it lives, I know that it could never compare to my love for this man, for my Gregory. For it is love—though the word itself is paltry to explain my affection for the man—that beats beneath my chest, that burns in my gut when I look upon this angel of mine. A love that will destroy me should I be forced to leave. This lighthouse and its keeper have become my new world now, and should I leave I will assuredly descend into the madness and fires of hell, for no heaven could dare exist without my perfect Gregory.

I dare not tell my Gregory of what transpired not yet a week ago, but I do believe that it may be possible that I was recognised by an inhabitant of my former life. I had been in market, haggling for fresh produce for Gregory’s table, when a man I believed I had never seen before had given me such a look of bewildered recognition that my breath caught in my throat. He was several yards away yet, though his height gifted him an ample view. His companion, far shorter, I could only glimpse between passing market patrons.

He was far more richly dressed than anyone living in this little hamlet, a queer hat atop his riot of curled hair so similar to my own, and he shouted a name that for an instant I thought I should know, but the next it was the name of a stranger I had no desire to ever meet. That I was resolved to never meet.

I do not wish to remember. I have no desire to know if Mycroft is my name or not, nor why this striking fellow would call out to me with this stranger’s name.

I cannot remember. I refuse to remember, for I fear remembering would be cataclysmic. I cannot leave this haven.

I will not leave.

I will spend the rest of eternity with my Gregory, my angel, and push all thoughts of strangers and names not my own out of mind. I only have one name now, and it is that which Gregory has given me, gifted to me the name of a character from one of his beloved novels. I belong here now, with Gregory and his mutt, in this quaint little cottage by the raging sea. The place of my rebirth.

I will not leave.

I will not remember.

For I know that I shall die if I do. The agony of separation a deadly blow than any blade.

Gregory is looking at me now, a kind curl to his lips and a warmth to his eyes as he glances over the pages of his novel, and I know that I can wait no longer.

Tonight, I think, when we retire for bed. If Gregory will not make the first move, then I shall, though I quake at my intention of forthrightness. I cannot bear another night alone, however, knowing Gregory lays mere feet away in another bed. Soon I hope we only have one.

Tonight I will bury my past, bury strangers and names that will never be my own now, and forever more lock away any memories that might dare to be unearthed, lock them away with permanence and completion. I will live the rest of my new life as Gregory’s, as he will be mine.

His one and only. My one and only.

As the waves crash now against the cliffside, I stare across the small distance to the man who has been my very own guiding light in this tempest of my mind and imagine our life and future together. A world of our own making.

Finally, I know now, that I am home.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Find me at my [Tumblr ](http://ladyxdarcy.tumblr.com).


End file.
